Health Care Reform and Abortion

No matter what you think about the many health care plans that have been proposed in recent days by President Obama and company, you must admit that the Democratic party has been persistent. They just keep the plans coming!

The latest, and most bi-partisan plan to date comes from senator Max Baucus. The issue for me, all along has not been how much money I am going to be giving to pay for health insurance for those who are not working–though that is a concern. Nor has the main issue for me been the fact that few of the proposed bills seem to provide any incentive to pursue private insurance over government funded insurance options. The big issue for me each time one of these plans is proposed is this–will my tax dollars go toward the funding of abortions?

If you know me or have read any of our many articles on the issue of abortion, you know where I stand–I believe abortion is murder and the way it has been conducted in the country is nothing short of genocide of the unborn.

This latest bill sets out that federal funding will not be provided for women seeking abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at stake.

However, there are a couple of areas that remain cloudy concerning whether women seeking abortion can receive federal funding.

The first area where this new plan gets tricky is in the area of government exchange programs that partner with private insurance companies. As it stands in the Baucus plan, private insurance companies “must separate the cost of coverage for abortions from their total costs for all coverage that they report to the federal government for tax credits.” This may be a step in the right direction, however, “the secretary of health and human services will determine how much that abortion coverage costs “per enrollee” . . . and those costs can’t be estimated to be less than $1 per enrollee per month.” So there is still some question as to how sure we can be that our tax dollars are not going to fund any abortions.

The Baucus plan also authorizes federal loans and grants to help create new state-level Co-Ops, which will compete with private insurance companies as private non-profit companies. As far as I can tell, the Baucus document does not explicitly authorize or bar the Co-Ops from providing abortion services. Under the Baucus plan, these new insurance plans would be “member run.” “Governance of the organization must be subject to a majority vote of its members (i.e. beneficiaries),” the plan reads. Presumably, this would allow for each Co-Op to make its own decision about what abortion services to cover, but this is not explicit in the document.

So there you have it–there is still significant reason to be concerned that your tax dollars could fund abortions. Republicans are expected to offer two amendments to the plan in the coming days that would address these areas of inconsistency. Stay tuned.